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SECTION II
RUNAWAY SLAVES ENTER THE RIVER COUNTIES
in Hamilton County
Cincinnati, Underground Union Depot, Part 1
Cincinnati Attracted Runaway Slaves
From its early days Cincinnati was an “outpost of freedom,” facing Covington and Newport, Kentucky, ramparts of slavery. It soon became also a union depot from which Underground Railroad lines diverged northward. As a flourishing young town in 1819 it included a congregation of Quakers and four-hundred Negroes. A decade later its colored population numbered 2,258. The “Black Laws” of 1807, to prevent free Negroes and mulattoes from becoming public charges, also imposed a fine of $100 or less on anyone employing or harboring a colored person. But these laws remained dead letters, and in 1829 a riot drove out more than 1,000 of the black race. In 1834 Cincinnati still had 740 colored residents.
Separated from Kentucky and Virginia by the Ohio River, the “Queen City” had steamboat connection with the remoter South. Thus from far and near fugitive slaves entered the city, which was a summer resort for planters from Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana by 1826. They brought servants with them, many of whom were coaxed away by local colored acquaintances. While moving freight at night, Negro deck hands escaped from boats at the landing into the basements of
1. Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1904), 692, 693; Journal of Negro History, I (1916), 4, 6, 7; Anti-Slavery Convention held in Putnam, O., Apr. 22–24, 1835, Proceedings, p. 29.

SECTION II
RUNAWAY SLAVES ENTER THE RIVER COUNTIES
in Hamilton County
Cincinnati, Underground Union Depot, Part 1
Cincinnati Attracted Runaway Slaves
From its early days Cincinnati was an “outpost of freedom,” facing Covington and Newport, Kentucky, ramparts of slavery. It soon became also a union depot from which Underground Railroad lines diverged northward. As a flourishing young town in 1819 it included a congregation of Quakers and four-hundred Negroes. A decade later its colored population numbered 2,258. The “Black Laws” of 1807, to prevent free Negroes and mulattoes from becoming public charges, also imposed a fine of $100 or less on anyone employing or harboring a colored person. But these laws remained dead letters, and in 1829 a riot drove out more than 1,000 of the black race. In 1834 Cincinnati still had 740 colored residents.
Separated from Kentucky and Virginia by the Ohio River, the “Queen City” had steamboat connection with the remoter South. Thus from far and near fugitive slaves entered the city, which was a summer resort for planters from Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana by 1826. They brought servants with them, many of whom were coaxed away by local colored acquaintances. While moving freight at night, Negro deck hands escaped from boats at the landing into the basements of
1. Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1904), 692, 693; Journal of Negro History, I (1916), 4, 6, 7; Anti-Slavery Convention held in Putnam, O., Apr. 22–24, 1835, Proceedings, p. 29.